A life in service: At age 102, Sister Mary Aidan remembers her childhood in Ireland, her teaching days at St. Ignatius and one famous student in particular (with video)

At Convent of Mercy Retirement Home in Mobile, petite, silver-haired Sister Mary Aidan, without aid of cane, moves lightly through the dining room, stepping over a threshold to the den.

“Watch your step,” she cautions.

Victor Calhoun, Staff PhotographerSister Mary Aidan, who turned 102 in August, was 20 when she sailed to America from her home in Ireland to become a Sister of Mercy in Mobile.

Even though she has resided in the United States for more than 80 years, her voice is inflected with her native Ireland.

At the age of 102, her eyesight seems good, her recall even better.

“There’s a lot back there,” she says of more than a half-century of memories as a parochial school teacher, serving as principal for many years of St. Ignatius School in Mobile.

She can still look over an eighth-grade class picture from, say, 1962, and point out different faces, among them Laurie Buffett, sister of Jimmy Buffett, whom she also taught; Billy Seifert, executive vice-President of Regions Bank; and many others.

Her favorite subjects were religion, then English and math.

She taught life lessons, too.

Just last week a long-ago student, now grown with a family, came to visit.

“He told me, ‘I’m still thinking about what we talked about many a time in school. There was a saying over your blackboard: To Think, Act, and Love Like Christ. I’m thinking about those words to this day.’”

She suffered no foolishness.

“They always said I was strict with them,” she says of her students. “You have to be. Otherwise, they’ll socialize and you’re at the end of your rope.”

She had her way of controlling behavior.

“All I had to do was look at them,” she says, peering over her glasses, her kindly expression suddenly no-nonsense, disapproving.

“They knew what I meant.”

Sister Mary Aidan was born Sarah Donaldson on Aug. 20, 1908, in Newry, Northern Ireland, a village near Belfast.

Her father, John, worked for the railroad. Her mother, Ellen Connolly, was a homemaker who died when Sarah was 4 years old.

She was an only child.

From a young age, Sarah lived and studied at a school run by the Sisters of Mercy.

She was close to her father, and recalls how, when he was home from his railroad duties, they would spend happy time together.

She was immersed in Catholicism.

“It seems like that was always part of our lives.”

She had contemplated a career in an order, but was interested in nursing.

Two Sisters of Mercy from far away came to visit her school, Mother Domenica and Sister Estelle.

They had traveled, she says, “directly from Mobile, Alabama, and I didn’t know where it was on the face of the earth.

“Mobile, Alabama — it could have been in Africa; it could have been anywhere.

“They presented their plan, and what they were trying to do for the schools in Alabama, and wanted to know if anyone would like the join the order to help with teaching the children.”

Sarah Donaldson, well into her teenage years by then, pondered her decision.

“When I thought about it I said, ‘Well, I did commit myself to God, and whatever he wanted was what I wanted.’ I had been thinking of nursing when I got the call from these two nuns. But it wasn’t a call from them. It was a call from God when I made up my mind.”

She waited two years for an exit visa. Her father was reluctant to see her leave.

“He said, ‘If you go and it’s not what you want, call and we’ll bring you back.’”

On Dec. 27, 1928, she met up with two other young women in Belfast, and traveled to Cork, Ireland, to set sail from the port of Cork.

She recalls vividly the name of the ship — the Baltic, on the White Star line — and the weather.

“We sailed in February,” she says. “I thought we were never going to make it. Storms, so forth. Everyone was sick.”

How did she endure it?

She laughs. “We just took it like everybody else!”

After the ocean crossing they arrived at Ellis Island, then were met in New York by a brother of one of the other women.

Within days they were on the way south, by train.

Her faith in God’s plan kept her directed, she says.

They arrived at the L&N Station in downtown Mobile.

“Those two nuns who had talked to us in Ireland,” she says, “were there to meet us.”

She figures there were then 105 Sisters of Mercy in Mobile.

The three newcomers joined the order. In addition to Sister Aidan were Sister Brandon and Sister Elizabeth.

Sister Aidan began teaching at the former St. Joseph’s in Mobile on Sept. 1, 1929 — two months before the stock market crash that began the Great Depression. She also worked at St. Mary’s, and did teaching stints in Huntsville, Birmingham and Bessemer.

She was St. Ignatius’ principal from 1956–1964, and taught there again from 1969–1978.

She does not romanticize the classroom.

“It’s always a mixed emotion with teaching, because you can come up with so many different characters, and you don’t know what’s going on at home.

“If you have 50 children — that was cut down to about 30 — then you’re dealing with 30 characters. And they’re all different. There’s no two alike.”

“You just have to think that you will not hurt one and praise the other one.”

After a long morning telling her story, Sister Aidan does not seem to flag. She sits up correctly in her chair — she emphasized posture for her students, she says — and comments, with pleasure, how many people sent her 102nd birthday greetings.

“I thought it was Christmas!”

Jimmy Buffett mailed a card.

“He was rather quiet,” she remembers of Buffett at St. Ignatius.

Her humor is still robust. When asked if she has a favorite saint, she answers, “I go directly to headquarters!”

She no longer does watercolors, though her paintings of birds and flowers line the hallways; nor is she able to exercise on the treadmill.

But she is eager to go and do as she can, read, visit with friends and former students, play computer games and write e-mails.

And pray.

She worries that parents today “are offering too much to children. Too much to keep the mind busy. They’re losing. That’s why we need to pray.”

She believes families should set aside a time for that prayer. She describes her own life as having been “emotionally always filled.”